Irregular Webcomic!: Burning Down the Alehouse

This is the first print collection of strips from Irregular Webcomic! The Kickstarter campaign to fund the printing ended successfully on 28 April, 2016. I printed extra copies, which you can buy from TopatoCo.

This book collects all of the Fantasy theme strips up to the hiatus period which began with strip #3198. That's 504 strips, plus some bonus material: character profiles, a cool double-page map, and a few bonus strips not published on the website. It comes to 140 pages.

Wow! I have questions!

Why not publish chronologically? Like the first 500 strips, across all themes?
Printing by theme will be more coherent, and will allow readers to follow the story of a single theme from beginning to... a logical end point.

Does the book include the annotations?
No, I'm afraid not. The text annotations I write for each comic are of variable length and so cannot comfortably be inserted between comics in a regular book layout. Even if collected at the end, the text would at least double the size (and cost!) of the book, and would take extra time to format and proof, which would delay production considerably. I understand some readers consider the annotations an integral part of the comic, but including them all is unrealistic.

Some of the long, informative annotations about real world subjects I hope to update, collect, and publish as a separate book at some later date.

Who's printing the book?
I've done this with the help of Make That Thing! They are a small company dedicated to helping webcomic artists source printing and distribution for books and other products, and are affiliated with the webcomic merchandise retailer TopatoCo, who print and distribute hundreds of webcomic book titles.

Will there be more books?
If this one is successful, yes! Subsequent books will collect various other themes from the comic.

What about the LEGO Group companies? Will they sue you?
I have hired professional intellectual property lawyers to advise me on potential copyright and trademark issues related to printing my comics, in particular on my use of LEGO blocks, but also on several other matters. With their expert advice on Australian and international intellectual property law, I am satisfied that any risk is acceptably minimal.